EA Sports' Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 is the latest game to get the limited-edition Xbox 360 treatment, with a console featuring cover athletes Tiger Woods and Rickie Fowler against the backdrop of a grayscale golf course. ...

Most core gamers saw Microsoft’s Kinect sensor and scoffed, dismissing out of hand its potential for use in anything but kids’ games and casual experiences. The people at EA Tiburon, however -- having already implemented precise motion controls for their Tiger Woods PGA Tour titles with Wii MotionPlus and PlayStation Move -- saw a chance to make their golf videogame more realistic than ever before.

I discussed Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13’s Kinect support with executive producer Brent Nielsen at a recent EA press event in New York. Kinect’s cameras are able to track an entire body, and that gave Tiburon an idea: “Instead of just simulating the swing of a club [...] we thought, ‘You know what? We actually have an opportunity to simulate the full golf swing.’ Because the golf swing is not just about the club in your hand; it’s your hips turn[ing], your shoulders, it’s the [swing] plane, and how your hands come through.”

Tighten up your swing, amateurs. You wouldn’t want to look silly in front of Kinect.

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Imagine yourself on Tea Olive, the first hole of the famed Masters course at Augusta National. Trying to avoid the bunker on the right side of the fairway, you aim your tee shot to the left -- but alas, you push it a bit too far, and it ends up in the trees. You can play conservatively and dig the ball out of the trees onto the fairway before trying for the green, but you're a pro golfer, and you can't afford the extra stroke against the stiff competition.

The more risky and difficult choice is to close your stance, stand with the ball near your back foot, and take an inside-out swing that curves the ball around the trees. With your skill and a healthy dose of luck, that will push the ball up the fairway and onto the green in regulation.

You couldn't pull that off in EA Sports' Tiger Woods PGA Tour -- until now.

[Editor's note: I played the Xbox 360 version of the game, which offers full Kinect support. I'll cover the Kinect integration in a separate article. --Samit]

You know, swinging. Like a golf club. SPORTS JOKES!
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At a Sony press event in New York City last week, I was able to try out PlayStation Move for the first time. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 was among the games I played, and it was immediately impressive. Here's how it works. You grasp the Move wand like a golf club, and use the face buttons to select a club. The big button in the center of the wand, simply named the "Move button," serves the function of the O button in the regular game -- it zooms the camera to the landing area of your shot.

When zoomed in, you hold the trigger and point the wand at the screen to move your shot target left or right. Once your target is set, you tap the Move button to go back to your behind-the-player camera angle for the shot. Then you aim the wand straight down toward the floor and hold the trigger to "lock in" your shot. After that, you're ready to swing away.

I spent part of my 4th of July weekend in Myrtle Beach, SC, where I played some golf for the first time in my life. I hooked most of my drives -- they veered off way to the left -- and that stroke was now evinced in PGA Tour 11 as well, thanks to PlayStation Move. My first few shots went so far leftward that I had to compensate by twisting my wrists to the right as I swung (and of course, I then ended up overcompensating). The point here is that Move works, and it works well.

During my demo, I asked the EA Tiburon developer on hand if he felt that there was any appreciable difference between the experiences that Move and Wii MotionPlus offer. He said that they're essentially identical, except that the ergonomically shaped Move wand feels better in his hand -- to be specific, it feels more like a golf club to him -- than the Wii Remote. And of course, there's no comparison between the beautifully rendered high-definition environments on the PlayStation 3 and the 480p output of the Wii.

Look for Move support to come to Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 via a launch-window patch.

Tiger Woods’ extramarital affairs made headlines last year, but in spite of his off-the-golf-course troubles, EA Sports forged ahead with the 2010 release of their annual golf franchise. However, Tiger shares the cover spotlight this year with the young North Irish phenom Rory McIlroy, a telling decision.

As a golfer, Woods simply hasn’t been his usual self since he returned from his hiatus. Is Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 any worse for the wear because it didn’t take a year off in the wake of the scandal? Hit the jump to find out.